


Johnny and Mary

by Minim Calibre (minim_calibre)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, First Time, Jossed, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-08
Updated: 2015-01-08
Packaged: 2018-03-06 17:51:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3143249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minim_calibre/pseuds/Minim%20Calibre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl back. Oldest story in the book, really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Johnny and Mary

**Author's Note:**

> Written during S2, long since Jossed.

It's a crisp September day in 1968 when Mary walks into 9th grade history class and into John Winchester's life. Fifth period, the second to last and longest of the day. They're only a week or two into the school year, only five minutes into class, and already John's wishing he could be anywhere else. Then there's a knock on the classroom door, and everything around him shifts slightly to the left.

A new student, just moved to Lawrence with her uncle, as it turns out. She's tall and quiet, with sharp features that soften slightly as he catches her eye. Green eyes. Cat's eyes, with blonde hair that falls in two tight braids down her back. Mary doesn't talk much, smiles less. He hears through the grapevine that both her parents are dead.

The first time he hears her laugh is the first time he asks her out.

"You should laugh more," he tells her.

She raises her delicate brows over those green cat's eyes and gives him a smile he can't read. "Should I?"

John bowls on ahead. "Maybe smile more, too."

The smile turns wide and a little wicked, and John is out of his depth. "So if I go get a burger with you, you going to give me something to smile about?"

"If you play your cards right."

Mary's rope-thin, but she puts away two burgers, an order of fries, half her chocolate shake, and is giving his fries a speculative look before he's even done eating his first burger. He shakes half his fries out on her tray, and says, "You must have a hollow leg." before he remembers you're not supposed to talk to girls about their eating habits.

If she minds, she gives no sign of it, just smiling as she twirls a fry in a puddle of ketchup and pops it between her lips. He feels something press and rub against his left calf, realizes with a start that it's her foot. "So why don't you tell me about yourself, John Winchester? I hear you're a bit of a thug."

He chokes on a sip of his drink, and Cherry Coke burns its way up his nose. By the time he recovers, her foot's back on her side of the table, and her hands are folded demurely in front of her.

"Who told you that?" He hasn't been busted for fighting even once this year.

"Everyone."

"Well, everyone's wrong."

Mary's not the first girl he's kissed. She's not even the first girl he's kissed with tongue and furtive hands sneaking under the edge of a sweater to stroke warm, soft skin. She's just the first he ever hopes will be his last, and when she breaks away and murmurs, "Goodnight, John." he just stands there at the corner of the sidewalk, hand against the tree she'd pressed him up against and a dumb grin plastered across his face as he watches her walk up the stairs to the front door of her uncle's house.

For months, they don't go far beyond kissing, though John wakes up at least once a week, tangled in sticky sheets, a phantom taste of Mary on his tongue. He gets into one fight--one--and no punishment will ever be as harsh as Mary saying "John." with her mouth downturned. Christmas, he gives her a dime store brooch in the shape of a heart. She pins it to her jacket, even though he knows it's not her style. She gives him a book, a dog-eared copy of _On the Road_. "My copy," she explains. "Yours now."

He understands, he thinks, and reads it, even though it's not his style, anymore than the brooch was hers.

She calls him Johnny in between kisses, and for the first time since he was ten years old, he doesn't hate the way the pet name sounds.

On a spring picnic, he slides a hand all the way beneath her skirt, rubs that eager, awkward hand over the soft cotton of her underwear. Mary's eyes screw tight and she arches into his palm and tells him, "More."

All he has to go on is instinct and dirty magazines stolen from his dad. John takes his free hand and pushes up her shirt, lowers his head to suck her nipple through her bra. Mary covers the hand between her legs with her own, guides it to where she's wet and hot, and John sees stars. He's barely able to hold himself together until she shudders under his mouth and hand, then he rolls off her, undoing his fly just in time to spend all over the picnic blanket.

Mary cleans up the mess with a napkin and a dazed smile. "Well," she says. "That was..." Her hands dance around, like she's trying to snatch the missing words out of the air.

And John tucks an escaped strand of golden hair back behind her ear. "Yeah," he tells her. "Wow."

Two weeks later, it's goodbye. They're at the picnic spot, hands looped loosely together, bodies stretched out on the freshly-crushed grass when Mary drops her bomb.

"You're moving?" He stares at her, hoping it's a joke.

"At the end of the week." She's the somber waif from history class now, not the Mary that he knows. "It's my uncle's job. I thought... I'm sorry, John."

Mary leaves, and life goes on. John's back to fighting and detention. He loses his virginity to a girl who's not Mary a month before he goes to Vietnam. He loses a lot of himself in the jungles of the war.

It's 1976, and John's back in Lawrence. Bicentennial flags all around in preparation for the 4th of July, and at 22 he's already feeling old, the pimple-faced kids hanging around the garage half a dozen years and half a world away from who he is now. He hopes for their sake the distance never closes.

Halfway to his car he hears her voice, "Johnny?" and thinks for a minute he's losing his mind, but it's her, it's Mary, walking towards him, her hair waving loose around her shoulders and a smile like the sun.

"Hey." He's covered in axle grease and motor oil, still in his blue coveralls with the last guy's name stitched in red above his heart.

This time, it's Mary who asks him out.

"What are you doing back in Lawrence?" His head's still spinning, still waiting for this to all turn out to be a mirage.

She finishes chewing the huge mouthful of cheeseburger and says, "Working." Then she ducks her head, looks up at him from under her lashes. "And maybe part of me hoped you were still in town when I took the job."

They catch a movie after dinner, then he drives her back to her building and walks her chastely to her door. It takes two more dates before he works up the nerve to kiss her, and he might have never, except it's the fourth day of July, and people are already lighting off fireworks and Mary notices he's jumpy, leads him into her basement apartment saying, "It's quiet here." and he's got his mouth over hers before they're even all the way through the door.

"This kind of fireworks," he says, much much later when they're wrapped in her Vera poppy print sheets and each other's arms, "I can handle."

"So I noticed." She kisses the crook of his arm, and settles in, and for the first time in a long time, John feels like he's come home.


End file.
